Hiring Laws

Enforcement of Federal and state laws in the hiring process

In order to simplify the hiring process and avoid the complications regarding the employment eligibility verifications and anti-discrimination issues it is very important for every organization to follow the hiring laws framed by the federal and state governments. In general perspective, the US hiring law prohibits the organizations in taking biased employment decisions based on various factors like race, color, gender (including pregnancy), religion, age (40 or older), origin of nationality, disclosure of genetic information, disability and veteran status etc. The employer must follow and enforce these federal laws before hiring the employees and ensure equal opportunity to all the applicants and employees. The hiring law makes it illegal to treat the applicants adversely on the basis of characteristics that cannot be changed and protects them from discrimination.

Enforcing the federal laws of hiring:

To avoid the discrimination against a job applicant and enforce the hiring law as per the federal statute the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has established some regulations to all the employers. The hiring law varies as per the jurisdiction and limits the employers’ ability to make a decision based on the certain criteria in the hiring process.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964, Age Discrimination Employment Act of 1967, Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, Americans with Disability Act of 1990, Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 and Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act of 2009 etc are some of the federal laws that protect the applicants and employees against all types of discrimination.

The hiring law not only protects the applicants or employees from disparity but strictly regulates the minimum wage laws and child labor. In some situations, these laws also control the pre-employment background checks and manage even the independent contractor situations.

State requirements for new hires:

Even though each state in US follow one or more laws of anti-discrimination from the federal regulations, some of them have added more protected classifications in terms of hiring process. Veteran status, sexual orientation, history of bankruptcy or bankruptcy claims filing status and so on are some of the statutes that prohibit the forms of discrimination under the hiring law.

As per the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 all the employers are required to report newly hired and re-hired workforce to a state directory within the 20 days of recruitment. This new hire registration system is made compulsory by the government and followed by almost all the states in US to protect the hiring law from exploitation.